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Leonwood

Leonwood

Since I have been doing this bow building thing for a few years now I decided to slowly update the website. And because I met so many international traditional archery enthousiasts I will try to do it in english from no on.

So what is is this website all about?

Basically it is about my interest in wooden bows and traditional archery. I love building bows and it is my goal to make as many different models with as many different wood species as I can! This site will mostly show pictures of my bows or how I make them. If you just want to see pics you can check out my bows or follow me on instagram

About Leonwood

My name is Leon Loef and I live in the Dutch village of Berkel en Rodenrijs with my wife and two beautiful daughters. I used to be a graphic designer and animator but the last few years I mostly create mobile applications at 23g To get away from all this digital office stuff I lock myself in my small shed and create bows.

About bows

For me a bow has nothing to do with the modern bows you see at the olympics or on tv. When I was a little kid we cut little twigs and put a string on it and shot bare bamboo tomato poles with it, that simplicity still intrigues me and that is what I try to put into every bow I make. That is why I love simple self bows without arrow shelves, just a stick and a string but with a lot of possibilities

Styles

There a hundreds of different traditional bow styles and I love most of them. I don't specialise in one single style so you can see a lot of different styles on this site and I will make more as I progress in bow making.

So why so much bows? Well the answer is simple: I love making them! I don't make bows because I need another one to shoot. I love the whole process from selecting or cutting the wood to seasoning the wood and slowly making it into a shootable bow! For this reason I mostly use simple hand tools so I can "feel" the wood. This makes creating a bow a very slow process but that is part of the fun!